Alex Ferguson My Autobiography (13 page)

Keane’s voice came on the line. ‘Roy, what on earth are you thinking about?’ Roy unspooled all his anger at McCarthy. I said: ‘Calm down. A bit of advice. You cannot afford to make your children go to school every day with this as the background to their lives. Think of your family. It will be horrendous. Forget the World Cup finals. This will be the biggest story all summer.’

He knew I was right. I told him to get back in there with McCarthy, just the two of them, sort it out and tell the manager he would be playing. Roy agreed. But by the time he went back, Mick had already given a press conference to explain what had been going on. There was no way back for Roy.

I defended Roy to the hilt because he had come from Manchester United, with the high standards we had. Going to a substandard training base, with no training kit, is a reasonable issue to get angry about, and as captain he had every reason to complain. The question in life is: how far do you take a grievance?

As bad as the conditions were in Korea, Roy shouldn’t have pushed his anger to such levels. But that was Roy. He was a man of extremes.

I always protected my players and Roy was no exception. It was my job. For that reason I can’t apologise for the times I stuck up for them when there were sound reasons to lurch the other way. There were times when I thought, ‘Christ, what were you thinking about?’ Cathy posed that question to me many times. But I couldn’t take sides against my players. I had to find solutions other than castigating them in public. Sometimes I had to fine or punish them, of course, but I could never let it out of the dressing room. I would have felt I had betrayed the one constant principle of my time as a manager: to defend. No, not to defend, but to protect them from outside judgments.

In modern football, celebrity status overrides the manager’s power. In my day you wouldn’t whisper a word about your manager. You would fear certain death. In my later years, I would hear constantly about players using their power against managers, and the player receiving the support of the public and even the club. The player will always spill his resentments to whoever might care to listen, but the manager will not do that, because he has wider responsibilities.

I think Roy realised he was coming to the end of his playing career and was starting to think he was the manager. He was assuming managerial responsibilities, and, of course, it’s not a managerial responsibility to go on Manchester United television and slaughter your team-mates.

By stopping it going out, we saved Roy from losing the respect of everyone in that dressing room. But once the meeting in my room developed such a venomous tone, that was the end of him.

The one thing I could never allow was loss of control, because control was my only saviour. As with David Beckham, I knew the minute a football player started trying to run the club, we would all be finished. The real players like that. They like a manager who’s tough. Or can be tough.

They like the manager to be a man. There’s a reward. The player will be thinking: ‘1. Can he make us winners? 2. Can he make me a better footballer? 3. Is he loyal to us?’ These are vital considerations, from the player’s side. If the answer to all three is yes, they will tolerate murders. I had some terrible mood-storms after games and was never proud of my outbursts. Some nights I would go home assailed by fear of the consequences. Maybe the players wouldn’t be talking to me next time I entered the training ground. Perhaps they would be raging or conspiring against me. But on Mondays, they would be more terrified of me than I was of them, because they had seen me lose my temper and were not keen to see it happen again.

Roy’s an intelligent guy. I saw him reading some interesting books. He’s a good conversationalist and good company when he’s in the right mood. The physio would come in and ask, ‘What sort of mood is Roy in today?’ because that would determine the whole mood of the dressing room. That’s how influential he was in our daily lives.

With his contradictions and mood swings he could be wonderful one minute and antagonistic the next. The switch would flick in a moment.

In one deep sense, him leaving was the best thing that could have happened, because a lot of the players were intimidated by him in the dressing room, and those players emerged well from his departure. John O’Shea and Darren Fletcher were certainly beneficiaries. When we went to France to pay Lille in Paris in November 2005, the players were booed on the pitch in the warm-up, partly as a consequence of what Roy had said in the MUTV interview. Fletcher and O’Shea took most of the heckling.

I think the dressing room relaxed when Roy left. Relief swept the room. They no longer had to listen to the barrage that some of them had grown to expect. Because he’d been a declining force, the gap he left was not as big as it would have been three years previously. I watched him in a Celtic v. Rangers game and said to Carlos beforehand, ‘He’ll be the star man today.’

Roy was never in the game. He played a passive role. The dynamic, fist-clenching, demanding Roy Keane wasn’t there. He loved it at Celtic Park. I spoke to him about it and he praised the training, the facilities, the Prozone. Things did settle down between us. About two months later I was sitting in my office discussing team business with Carlos, when a member of staff called to say that Roy was here to see me. I was startled.

‘I just want to apologise to you for my behaviour,’ he said. That’s when he began describing the scene at Celtic and telling me how well his work was going. But when I saw him in that Rangers–Celtic game I knew he wouldn’t carry on with it.

Changes were already in motion before Roy left, but they weren’t yet apparent. There is one abiding truth about Manchester United: we are always capable of producing new players, fresh names, and we had them on tap again as Roy was heading out. Fletcher was acquiring maturity and experience; I brought Ji-Sung Park to the club; Jonny Evans was breaking through.

Often first-team players can’t recognise the regeneration going on around them because they can’t see beyond themselves. They have no clue what’s going on further down the scale. Giggs, Scholes and Neville were exceptions. Maybe Rio and Wes Brown. Others would have no idea. They see their job as playing. But I could see foundations developing. That wasn’t a great period for us in terms of trophies. Yet when you’re managing change, you have to accept the quieter spells and acknowledge that transformations take longer than a year.

I could never ask for three or four years to achieve change, because at Manchester United you would never have that time, so you try to expedite it, and be bold sometimes: play young players, test them. I was never afraid of that. It was never just a duty, but a part of the job I loved. It’s who I am. I did it at St Mirren and Aberdeen and Manchester United. So, when we faced those periods, we always put our trust in younger players.

In terms of recruitment targets, Carlos fancied Anderson strongly. In one day, David Gill travelled to Sporting Lisbon to sign Nani and then drove up the motorway to buy Anderson from Porto. They cost a bit of money, but it showed what we thought, as a club, about young talent. We had a good defensive nucleus of Ferdinand, Vidi
ć
and Evra. We were a solid unit at the back. Rooney was developing. We let Louis Saha go because he was always picking up injuries. We had Henrik Larsson for a while, and he was a revelation.

After an initial rapprochement, relations with Roy soured again. I saw a remark he had made in the newspapers to the effect that he had washed Man United out of his life. His claim was that we would all have forgotten him by then. How could anyone forget what he did for the club? The press used to see him as a quasi-manager, because of his winning appetite, and the way he drove the team on. They would ask me all the time: ‘Do you think Roy Keane will be a manager?’ As his career in coaching developed, it became apparent that he needed to spend money to achieve results. He was always looking to buy players. I didn’t feel Roy had the patience to build a team.

In the 2011–12 season, we crossed swords again when Roy was highly critical of our young players after the defeat in Basel, which knocked us out of the Champions League, and I responded by referring to him as a ‘TV critic’. If you studied his final days at Sunderland and Ipswich, his beard would get whiter and his eyes blacker. Some might be impressed with his opinions on TV and think: ‘Well, he’s got the balls to take on Alex Ferguson.’ From the minute he became a TV critic, I knew he would focus on United.

As for blaming the young players? He wouldn’t have aimed that accusation at Wayne Rooney, who wouldn’t have stood for it. The senior players would sort him out. Fletcher and O’Shea are the two he picked on, and they were booed as a result by our fans when we played Lille in Paris. His two spells in management proved one thing: he needs money. He spent at Sunderland and failed. He spent a lot at Ipswich and came up short.

He gave an interview to David Walsh of the
Sunday Times
saying I only looked after myself, and used the John Magnier/Rock of Gibraltar situation as an example. Unbelievable. That day in my office, when we clashed, I saw the anger in him. His eyes blackened. He went on about John Magnier that day as well. I never understood his obsession with the Rock of Gibraltar affair.

In the arrangement we reached on that momentous Friday, it was agreed that no one would ever talk about our fall-out. I would have honoured that agreement, but for the fact that Roy breached it first. When Roy was at Sunderland he accused United of insulting him and lying to him in the build-up to his departure. The club considered legal action against him. Roy said he would not retract the accusation. My feeling was that he was looking for a day in court to impress the fans. He was still a hero to them, after all. So my advice to David Gill was to pull the legal action. I feel we preserved our dignity.

T
HE
football-watching public probably saw me as an obsessive who seldom looked beyond Manchester United for entertainment. But as the demands of the job intensified, I found refuge in numerous interests and hobbies that kept my mind stretched, my book shelves packed and my cellar stocked with good wines.

Apart from my love of horse racing, this other life stayed hidden from view. It was the world I returned to when the day had run its course at Carrington, our training ground, or when the match had been played, commented upon and filed away. Over the final ten years or so, I eased myself into a range of other interests that helped me manage United more effectively. I worked just as hard but used the muscles of the mind in a more varied way. Home was a base for all my fascinations, from biographies of the dictators to documents on the John F. Kennedy assassination and files on my wine collection.

My political convictions have remained largely unchanged from my time as a shop steward in the shipyards of Govan. People’s opinions change over time with success and wealth, but in my youth I acquired not so much a range of ideological views as a way of seeing life; a set of values.

I’ve never been active in the sense of becoming a Labour Party animal who attended every dinner and popped up in every election campaign. But I always supported local Labour MPs. Cathy would say that the minute you extend yourself into politics, they will want you every time. An expectation will develop that you’re always ready and willing to give your time. Being a believer in the Labour Party and socialist principles is one thing, but becoming an active member was another. I just didn’t have the time as Man United manager to accommodate those demands. I would put my cross on the ballot paper and support them in a visual way. You wouldn’t see me sitting beside David Cameron, would you? You would see me alongside a Labour MP. That would be my impact.

I’ve always been on the left of the party, which explains my high opinion of Gordon Brown’s work. John Smith’s, too. The late John Smith would have been a fine Labour prime minister. I felt sorry for Neil Kinnock: a good guy with bad luck. I would have loved to see him in Downing Street. He had that fiery nature. I was closer to Brown in principle but accept that Blair’s more populist way was the route to get elected. He was correct in his positioning. Plus, he had charisma to go with it and was popular for a long time until the invasion of Iraq undermined the public’s view of him.

My friendship with Alastair Campbell developed through that great man, veteran Scottish football reporter and confidant of several Labour prime ministers, Jim Rodger. He called and asked me to do a piece with Alastair, who was with the
Mirror
at the time. Alastair and I got on well and he would send me wee letters and so on. He was a good networker. Then he became Tony’s press secretary and we became good friends through his role in the Labour Party. I had dinner with Alastair, Tony and Cherie in the Midland Hotel in Manchester the week before the 1997 election. I told Tony, ‘If you can keep your government in one room and lock the door you’ll have no problems. The problem with government is that they all fly off on their own, they have their own allies, their own journalistic contacts. Controlling the cabinet is going to be the hard part.’

Tony was receptive to that message. In any position of power there is fragility. If you’re leading the country there is vast responsibility and a certain loneliness that I could relate to. I would sit in my office in the afternoon, with my work complete, wanting company. There is a vacuum attached to the job that people don’t want to break into. Tony was a young man going into that position.

In his memoirs he wrote that he had asked my opinion on sacking Gordon Brown when he was prime minister and Gordon was next door in No. 11. My recollection is that Tony wasn’t specific about Gordon. His question was about superstars and how I dealt with them. My answer was: ‘The most important thing in my job is control. The minute they threaten your control, you have to get rid of them.’ He did say he was having problems with Gordon but didn’t ask me specifically what I thought he should do. I kept my advice general because I didn’t want to get into personality issues.

I’ve always found that you have to take the hard road all the time, whether it’s popular or not. If you have a worry about one of your staff, that tells you straight away there is a problem. It never made sense to me to go to bed every night worrying when you could do something to cut the problem away.

Power is useful if you want to use it, but I don’t think it resonates with footballers, who are mostly working-class men. But control was my aim. I could use my power if I wished, and I did, but when you reach the station I attained at United, power came with it naturally. The big decisions you make in those jobs are usually seen by outsiders as exercises in power, when control is really what it’s about.

Labour politics and the great vineyards aside, America was the source of my main intellectual interests. JFK, the Civil War, Vince Lombardi and the great American ball games: these were among my escapes from the pressures of football. New York was my entry point to American culture. We bought an apartment there, which all the family used, and Manhattan became the ideal venue for short breaks when the international calendar took the players away from Carrington.

The States always intrigued and inspired me. I fed off America’s energy and vastness, its variety. My first trip there was in 1983, when Aberdeen won the European Cup Winners’ Cup. I took the family to Florida, for a routine kind of holiday. By then, though, America and its history had already entered my blood. The killing of John Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 left its mark on me from the day I heard the news. Over time I developed a forensic interest in how he was killed, by whom, and why.

I remember the day that shook the world. It was a Friday night and I was shaving in the mirror, at the bathroom sink, before going to the dancing with my mates. My dad, who was a bit deaf, called out: ‘Is that right that John Kennedy has been shot?’

‘Dad, you’re deaf. You’re imagining it,’ I called back, and dried myself off, thinking nothing of it. Half an hour later the news flashed up. He had been taken to Parklands Hospital.

I always remember, at the dancing, at the Flamingo, near Govan, hearing the song that went to No. 1: ‘Would You Like to Swing on A Star?’ The atmosphere was muted. Instead of dancing we sat upstairs and talked about the murder.

For a young lad like me, Kennedy captured the imagination. He was a good-looking boy and there was a certain spark about him. It resonated that someone as fresh and dynamic as him could become president. Though he stayed in my consciousness, as a defining figure, my interest in the assassination developed along an unexpected route when I was invited to speak at a dinner in Stoke by Brian Cartmel.

Stanley Matthews and Stan Mortensen were both present, along with Jimmy Armfield, and I remember thinking: ‘What am I doing here, with all these great players? Surely they’d prefer to listen to Stanley Matthews rather than me?’

But during the dinner, Brian asked me, ‘What are your hobbies?’

‘I don’t have time for hobbies,’ I said. I was obsessed with United. ‘I have a snooker table in the house, I like a round of golf and I like watching movies at home.’

He pulled out a card. ‘My son has a firm in London, he gets all the early releases. Any time you want a film, give him a call.’

The previous night I had been to the pictures in Wilmslow to see
JFK
. ‘Are you interested in that?’ asked Brian. By then I had assembled several books on the shooting. ‘I was in the fifteenth car in the motorcade,’ Brian said. There we were in The Potteries and this guy was telling me he had been in the JFK motorcade.

‘How?’

‘I was a
Daily Express
journalist. I emigrated to San Francisco and worked for
Time
magazine,’ he said. ‘I applied to the Kennedy administration in 1958 to work on the election.’ Brian had been on the plane when Johnson was sworn in as president.

That personal connection drew me deeper in. I started going to auctions. A lad from America who had read about my interest in the subject sent me the autopsy report. I kept a couple of photographs at the training ground – one I bought in an auction, and another that was given to me. I also bought the Warren Commission report signed by Gerald Ford at auction. That cost me $3,000.

When Cathy and I went back to the States in 1991 for our wedding anniversary we travelled to Chicago, San Francisco, Hawaii, Las Vegas and on to friends in Texas, with New York at the finish. We went most years after that. My book collecting gathered pace. The definitive biography of John Kennedy is probably Robert Dallek’s
An Unfinished Life, John F. Kennedy 1917–1963
. That’s an exceptional book. Dallek had access to Kennedy’s medical files and showed that he was a walking miracle, with Addison’s disease and liver problems.

In the three years of his presidency, plenty of battles came his way, with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, for which he took the blame, as well as segregation, the Cold War, Vietnam and the Cuban missile crisis. Medicare was another rumbling issue, as it is today. It was some workload. Here’s an aside that casts light on the importance of the world’s favourite game. Later, in 1969, do you know how the CIA realised the Soviets were at work in Cuba? Football pitches. Aerial shots of football pitches laid out by Soviet workers. The Cubans didn’t play football. Henry Kissinger was European in temperament and understood that.

My reading on the Kennedys brought me into contact with some wonderful literature: David Halberstam’s
The Best and the Brightest
stands out. It concentrates on the reasons for going into Vietnam, and the lies the Kennedy brothers were told. Even Robert McNamara, US Secretary of Defense and a friend of the family, was misleading them. He apologised, in retirement, to the Kennedy family

On our summer tour of America in 2010, I visited Gettysburg and went to lunch at Princeton University with
James M. McPherson, the great Civil War historian who wrote
Battle Cry of Freedom
. I was also shown round the White House. My fascination with the Civil War started when somebody gave me a book about the generals in that conflict. Both sides had dozens. Teachers were made generals. Gordon Brown asked me one day what I was reading about. ‘The Civil War,’ I said. Gordon said he would send me some tapes. Soon I was taking delivery of 35 recordings of lectures by Gary Gallagher, who went on to work with James McPherson on the role of the navy in the war, a largely untold story.

Then along came horse racing, another great passion, another outlet. Martin Edwards, the former chairman, had called me one day to say, ‘You should take a day off.’

‘I’m all right,’ I replied.

But I was at the stage where Cathy was saying, ‘You’re going to kill yourself.’ At home, after work, I would be on the phone until 9 o’clock at night and thinking about football every minute.

I bought my first horse in 1996. On our 30th anniversary we went to Cheltenham, where I first met that fantastic man, John Mulhern, the Irish trainer, for lunch. That night I joined them in London for dinner. Inevitably I found myself saying to Cathy in the aftermath, ‘Do you fancy buying a horse? I think it’ll be a release for me.’

‘Where did you get that one from?’ she said. ‘Alex – the problem with you is that you’ll want to buy every bloody horse.’

But it did open this release valve for me. Instead of stagnating in my office or burning time in endless telephone conversations, I could switch my thoughts to the Turf. It was a welcome distraction from the gruelling business of football – and that’s why I threw myself into it, to enable me to escape the obsession with my job. Winning two Grade 1 races with What A Friend has been a highlight. The Lexus Chase and the Aintree Bowl. The day before the Aintree race, we had been beaten by Bayern Munich in the Champions League. One minute my head was on the floor. The next day I was winning a Grade 1 race at Liverpool.

My first horse, Queensland Star, was named after a ship my dad worked on and helped to build. Trainers have told me of owners who’ve never had a winner. I’ve had 60 or 70 and I now have shares in around 30 horses. I’m very keen on the Highclere Syndicate: Harry Herbert, who runs it, is a great personality and a fine salesman. You know exactly what’s happening with the horses, with information every day.

Rock of Gibraltar was a wonderful horse; he became the first in the northern hemisphere to win seven consecutive Group 1 races, beating Mill Reef’s record. He ran in my colours under an agreement I had with the Coolmore racing operation in Ireland. My understanding was that I had a half share in the ownership of the horse; theirs was that I would be entitled to half the prize money. But it was resolved. The matter was closed when we reached a settlement agreeing that there had been a misunderstanding on both sides.